Pages

Monday, 8 January 2018

A Bee Sting On The Face

I want to continue last week’s discussion of totems, and how
animals appear in our lives when they have a message to deliver. For that
reason, my posts this week won’t follow a typical pattern.

In general, when we think of totems, we imagine eagles or
wolves or other exotic and rare creatures that we are unlikely to encounter in
the course of a normal day. Yet any animal can act as a totem. In our modern
parlance, a totem is the same thing as a waking dream symbol. With that
understanding, it gives us an advantage: If we know how to work with dream
symbols, we can easily figure out what the totem message is.

And to repeat a point that was made last week in our
examination of the waking dream about ants, animal totems are willing to die to
get their message delivered. To them, the difference between being killed for
food and giving their lives to assist life forms in other ways is
negligible.

The example I’d like to use this week is a waking dream that
happened to me in the early 1990s. I was living in Vermont on a 50-acre farm,
and its care was my responsibility. I had been studying metaphysics for a few
years, and was overconfident. In fact, I was sure of myself to the point of
arrogance. I understood the idea that someone in charge of a farm is also the
spiritual custodian of the land and its habitat, and I took this responsibility seriously.

Every autumn it was important to walk the perimeter of the
property and make certain that all of the “No Hunting” signs were still intact;
weather, wear-and-tear, and occasionally, vandalism tended to take their toll,
and many signs had to be secured and replaced.

I had been working with Sufi geomancers and had been studying
the elementals—they’re called “fairies” in more archaic parlance—and set about
to walk the perimeter of my property (a half day event on 50 acres) staying in
touch with these beings. It is their job to oversee the natural environment,
and I wanted to be in tune with them and do things in accordance with what they
thought was best for the land.

The trouble was that my intention was more of an idea than
it was based on any experience or actual psychic communication. I was sending
out thoughts that I believed—rather naively and arrogantly—were a communication
with the elementals. In fact, I was just communicating with my own brain.

About half way through my perimeter survey, I was walking
along, feeling “in charge,” when suddenly, a bee came out of nowhere, and stung
me on my face. Keep in mind, this was late October in Vermont, and bees had
gone into hibernation weeks ago.

I was stunned. Shocked. Mortified. My pride was wounded. I
was perplexed and confused. And my left cheek was swelling up and painful. I
could not understand why I had been so hurtfully treated when I had gone
out of my way to be considerate of the elementals. After all, who else would
have been so “in tune” with nature?

No comments:

Post a Comment

Me and My Blog

Hello! Welcome to my blog about dream interpretation. My name is David Rivinus and I'm a dream analyst with over 40 years of experience. On this blog you can read dreams and their interpretations. You can also follow discussions and theories of the interpretation process--including some unusual ideas about what constitutes a dream. I always invite your constructive comments and insights. If you enjoy what you read here, I also invite you to follow my blog by clicking on the "subscribe" button at the bottom left corner of this page.
To read my profile, click on the "About Me" link above. You can also contact me at david@teacherofdreams.com.